Using Smart Speakers to Engage with Your Customers

Executive Summary

Smart speakers and voice assistants represent one of the best new opportunities for companies to engage with, interact with, and learn from their customers. With more than a quarter of U.S. adults owning smart speakers and interacting with brands via voice assistants regularly, now is the time to start thinking about ways to leverage this technology. One of the common denominators among successful implementations of voice technology is the ability to reduce friction for the user – the time and effort a user spends to accomplish a task. Companies can get started by determining which areas of their total offering present opportunities to reduce friction, and how to effectively extend their brand in a genuine way. After developing their voice experiences, businesses will need to experiment and work to understand how best to drive customers toward the new voice experiences they’ve created, by making the customer aware that these voice experiences are designed to save them time and effort.

HBR Staff/Plume Creative/Getty Images

Smart speakers and voice assistants represent one of the best new opportunities for companies to engage with, interact with, and learn from their customers. According to Voicebot.ai’s Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption report from March 2019, 66.4 million U.S. adults own a smart speaker, comprising 26.2% of the U.S. adult population. With more than a quarter of U.S. adults owning smart speakers and interacting with brands via voice assistants regularly, now is the time for companies of all sizes and across all segments to start thinking about ways to leverage this new technology to their advantage.

Reducing Friction

One of the common denominators among successful implementations of voice technology is the ability to reduce friction for the user. Friction represents the time and effort a user spends to accomplish a task. So, if the opportunity presents itself to make a specific task more efficient via voice technology compared to the incumbent method, companies should seize it.

For example, companies can provide the ability for customers to set an appointment through Alexa. Salons, hair stylists, restaurants, healthcare clinics, and other appointment-based businesses can offer their customers the ability to schedule their next haircut or book a table through a voice assistant. Rather than the customer having to call and make a reservation, they can execute the same task with less friction through a simple voice command: “Alexa, make a dinner reservation at Balthazar in Manhattan for 4 people on June 1st at 8 p.m.”

Insight Center

Businesses can also reduce friction when it comes to surveys. Many fast-food restaurants, retailers, and mom-and-pop shops direct their customers via a sales receipt to a URL to fill out a survey. “Rather than sending customers on a wild goose chase to fill out a survey online, voice surveys present a new methodology that is way easier, less obtrusive, and hands-free for the customer,” said Stuart Crane, CEO of Voice Metrics, a voice-enablement agency that allows companies to add Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri to their software products. “Companies can extend their brand in so many new ways with voice, such as being able to use their spokesperson to issue the survey instead of the generic, automated voices typically associated with surveys.”

Extending the Brand via Voice

Business leaders need to ask themselves if voice technology is right for their brand and, if so, figure out how to extend the company’s brand into a voice modality. For example, Tide extended its brand by creating an Alexa skill called Stain Remover, which allows users to ask Alexa how to remove stains for more than 200 different types of stains. When asked how to remove a red wine stain, Alexa responds, “Step one, pour club soda or cold water on stain; Step two, blot with absorbent cloth; Step three, pour liquid detergent on stain and rub fabric together; Step four, let it stand for several minutes, then rinse with water; Step five, wash according to care label.”

Alexa skills and Google actions, which let you extend the built-in functionality of Alexa and Google Home devices, are not limited to consumer brands, either. Boston Children’s Hospital manifested its brand through voice by launching Kids MD, an Alexa skill that allows worried parents to ask questions regarding their children’s symptoms. Since every answer in Kids MD is entered by Boston Children’s Hospital, parents can feel confident that the information they’re gathering from the skill is credible and safe, as opposed to the uncertainty that might come with something like a Google query.

Voice technology represents a great opportunity for businesses to engage and interact with other businesses and clients, as well. For example, Anthony Johnson, executive vice president at building design and construction company, Clayco, told me: “Our Clayco Alexa skill offers us the ability to communicate and constantly stay in touch with our clients. We’re viewing Alexa as an additional way we can deliver information about what’s new with our business or a specific project, directly to clients through a smart speaker.”

Engagement Is Key

According to a consumer survey conducted by Deloitte in 2018, 69% of respondents indicated that they use smart speakers weekly, and 47% use their speakers daily. While businesses can feel confident that their customers are accessible via voice technology, simply creating a voice experience is not enough. “Having a voice experience is only half the battle,” said Bob Stolzberg, CEO of VoiceXP, a voice platform service. “Successfully marketing your voice experience is the other half of the battle.” Once the voice experience has been developed, the next step is to make customers aware of the experience to ultimately generate engagement.

Marketers should recognize that voice technology presents a learning curve similar to the one they encountered with digital marketing and social media. Just as they had to learn SEO, social media content strategies, optimal times to publish content, and so forth, they will need to learn the nuances of voice technology as they work to implement it into their overall communications and marketing strategy. Businesses can lean on their existing communication channels to increase awareness with consumers around the new voice experiences that are available to them through smart speakers.

Companies of all types can get started by determining which areas of their total offering present opportunities to reduce friction, and how to effectively extend their brand in a genuine way. After developing their voice experiences, businesses will need to experiment and work to understand how best to drive customers toward the new voice experiences they’ve created, by making the customer aware that these voice experiences are designed to save them time and effort.

Dave Kemp is the author of the FuturEar.co blog, where he documents the rapid technological breakthroughs that are occurring in the hearables market, including biometric sensors and voice assistants.